[Pipet Devel] license nominations

[Jean-Marc Valin]

> GPL (not LGPL) for all of Piper, with 2 modifications and clarifications: (1)
> A UI written to work via CORBA can be in any license (CORBA is not "linking"),
> and (2) plugins that operate as "nodes" can be in any license (they are not
> "linked" to from Piper).  ("Linking" is as defined in the GPL.)
> 
> My reason for choosing the GPL is that it will provide better "protection" for
> the infrastructure created by Piper, as argued by Jarl a couple days ago.
> 
> Other nominations?

First, the LGPL only makes sense for a library, not for a program, so licensing
the UI under the GPL makes sense (I think everybody will agree on that). For the
PL, I'm still undecided, but I think I'd like to have it released under the LGPL
(remember, the PL is also the Overflow project). The same applies to libflowui,
which is included in the DL. I have no real opinion about the BL, but since Jarl
wants it GPL, it's OK with me.

Now, a bit about plugins... Actually, I don't want to use the term and only
refered to it so I could be understood by Piper-unaware people. The term I want
to use is toolbox. A toolbox is a .so library that can contain any number of
node implementations. When it starts, the PL looks for all the toolboxes in its
path and loads them all (with dlopen). What I'm afraid is that if dlopen-ing a
.so file is considered linking by the GPL then, regardless of the license used
for the PL, using a GPL'd toolbox at the same time as a closed-source toolbox
would be illegal, since the GPL'd toolbox would be linked to the closed-source
toolbox. The only solution I see if dlopen-ing is considered linking is to
release the PL under a dual GPL-LGPL license, so that you could legally chose
between having the right to use GPL'd plugins or not.

So what I'm thinking about is:

UI: GPL
DL: GPL (except for libflowui, which is part of Overflow and would be LGPL)
BL: GPL  (mother, baby, grandma)
PL: Dual license -> GPL + (LGPL+linking modification)
Toolboxes: any

	Jean-Marc

-- 
Jean-Marc Valin
Universite de Sherbrooke - Genie Electrique
valj01 at gel.usherb.ca